Information for Inspiration.
A resource for Intuitive Eating, eating disorder recovery, and body acceptance
Can You Heal Your Relationship with Food Without Gaining Weight? Let’s Talk About It
Usually, by the time someone is sitting with me, they’ve been struggling for quite a while. Sometimes months, often years. They are exhausted by the amount of physical and mental energy they are spending on trying to manage food and control their weight.
At some point they will often say something like, “I really want to heal my relationship with food, without gaining weight.”
Or, “…but I can’t gain weight.”
Or, “…but I really need to lose weight, too.”
Sometimes it’s this very concern that’s kept them in a place they don’t want to be or delayed them from reaching out to get support sooner.
So, is it possible to heal your relationship to food without gaining weight? Let’s get into it.
What is Intuitive Eating, Really?
I remember when I picked up the book Intuitive Eating for the first time. It blew my mind.
The idea that weight was not inextricably linked to health, that pursuing intentional weight loss was correlated to future weight gain, that dieting was a primary predictor of eating disorder development, and that meticulously measuring and tracking every morsel of food that crossed one’s lips was disordered eating was all brand-new information to me.
So much of my training to become a dietitian centered around how to help people control their food more. The notion that, a key to building a healthier relationship with food was actually to control less was kind of mind-boggling.
I’m a Non-Diet, Weight-Inclusive Dietitian: Here’s What That Means
If you’ve been around my corner of the internet for any amount of time, you’ve likely seen me using phrases like non-diet, weight-inclusive, and intuitive eating to describe how I approach my work as a registered dietitian.
I realize, though, that these words can seem ambiguous. Social media and real-life conversations both have highlighted for me that not everyone interprets these words the way I do (and the way I intend when I use them).